Pages

Sunday, August 5, 2012

John at Otakon 2012

The convention has been an annual retreat for me for years.
In many ways it’s my TED Talks, even though I go to film and show screenings
rather than lectures. I don’t have the knowledge to curate viewing myself, but
in a weekend I’m exposed to more new plots and characterizations than I’d find
in a year’s subscription to HBO or Asimov’s. That’s not a slight against our
American media, but recognition that it is American media. Otakon prominently features
Japanese, Chinese, Indian and Korean film and fiction.

We have cross-cultural similarities, but they produce
different thoughts and norms, which broaden an imagination largely trained by
just one media culture. Even the mundane tropes of their TV shows cast
different light on what we could do in our stories but never think about. No U.S. police
procedural or cyperpunk was like Ghost in
the Shell; no Romantic Comedy I’ve ever seen stacks up to Delhi Belly; and the only filmmaker I
can compare Let the Bullets Fly to is
Quentin Tarantino. I sit through some of the most juvenile programs, simply
studying how they handle things we never think about. I sketched out the first
original novel I ever wrote sitting in the back row during a High School Comedy
marathon.

Totoro reminds John to stop being pretentious.

There are many reasons to go to something like this. The
Voice Actors After Dark panel, where I heard a vampiric butler read Go The F*ck To Sleep, was one. The Anime
Music Video Contest, in which fans create music videos of spliced popular music
and clips from shows, routinely beats the hell out of what I see on MTV and validates
it as an artform. I’ve got no desire to see Final Destination 5, but the fake
trailer one fan made from its audio and clips from the anime Another is something I’d pay to watch,
if only it were real. And then there’s cosplay.

I’ve never been into costuming. I enjoy that other people
enjoy it, and have a profound appreciation for the fandom. As an author, I’d
love to create characters that audiences would spend months patterning costumes
after. Yet at the show I ran into a new breed of cosplayer, which almost
inspired in me a desire to dress up. It’s not merely satisfactory to create a
good likeness of your favorite character. These characters created the
likenesses of their favorite characters from specific moments in their favorite
stories.

For instance, anyone can fashion a purple vest and
giant foam sword. But what about recreating the time Final Fantasy hero Cloud
Strife dressed in drag to sneak into a brothel?

If only I were capable of photographing
myself high-fiving someone.

Full Metal Alchemist has enduring popularity in fandom, but
it takes real tenacity to pretend you’re dead for two hours to recreate the
saddest moment in the series.

Spoilers!

Yes. Yes, this is humanity tapping its full potential. My
inspiration took me far enough to follow someone dressed as The Laughing Man
for half a city block, until he was next to a payphone. If you know why, then you belong here.

Probably the only J.D. Salinger quote
that will ever appear on this site.

I didn’t bother too many people for photographs, especially
as I only recognized a tenth or less of the characters. My favorite moments
didn’t seem appropriate to photograph; people in intricate costumes at rest,
hugging or chatting with friends they hadn’t seen in months or years. Once it
leaves the individual experience, a lot of Speculative Fiction in any medium
exists as an excuse to bond. Half the reason I photographed this group was just
because they looked so happy to see each other.

For people with so many weapons, they were so cheery.

The other half was they looked like the bitchin’est version
of the British Red Coats ever. Otaku and assorted anime fans get crapped on for
liking such weird Japanese stuff. Why can’t they enjoy normal American things? You know, like...

It's Mysterio's hand gesture that gets me.

To be fair, both the anime-lovers and comics-lovers tend to
get short shrift in our society. I endorse both the above-photographed groups,
though, especially after they wore and carried all that stuff through a
100-degree city. Don’t bother asking why they’d want to go through such
exertion - not the same week as the Olympics, my friend.

Fandom can get unnerving at such conventions. Craigslist
fills up with roleplaying sex requests, and apparently in the Dealers’ Room one
company set up a stripper pole for Panty & Stocking cosplayers. That grown
women would do that for hours is entertaining to some segment. But for me, this
is entertainment:

A stripper pole with a Gone Fishin’ sign. That’s all I can
ask from any sales booth.